Rewriting & redirecting

Similar to error message cloaking, URL rewriting can prevent the disclosure of underlying
technology or web site structures to HTTP clients.
For example, when visiting a blog web page, its URL might be:
http://www.example.com/wordpress/?feed=rss2
Simply knowing the file name, that the blog uses PHP, its compatible database types, and
the names of parameters via the URL could help an attacker to craft an appropriate attack
for that platform. By rewriting the URL to something more human-readable and less
platform-specific, the details can be hidden, such as:
http://www.example.com/rss2
Aside from for security, URL rewriting can also be for aesthetic and business reasons.
Shorter URLs with easy-to-remember phrases and formatting are easier for customers to
understand, remember, and return to.
URL rewriting rules can do much more than their name implies. They can:

redirect HTTP requests to HTTPS

rewrite the URL line in the header of an HTTP request

rewrite the Host: field in the header of an HTTP request

rewrite the Referer: field in the header of an HTTP request

redirect requests to another web site

send a 403 Forbidden response to a matching HTTP requests

rewrite the HTTP location line in the header of a matching redirect response from
the web server

rewrite the body of an HTTP response from the web server

Note: URL rewrites are not supported in all modes. See Supported features per
operation mode on page 89.

To configure a URL rewriting rule

1 Go to Application Delivery > URL Rewriting Policy > URL Rewriting Rule.

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2 Click Create New.

A dialog appears. Its appearance varies by your settings in Action Type, and Request
Action or Response Action.

Clear all
Edit
Delete
3 In Name, type a name that can be referenced by other parts of the configuration. Do
not use spaces or special characters. The maximum length is 35 characters.
4 In Action Type, select whether this rule will rewrite HTTP requests from clients
(Request Action) or HTTP responses from the web server (Response Action).
The next step varies by your selection in this step.
5 If you selected Request Action in Action Type, in the Request Action drop-down list,
select one of the following:

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Rewrite HTTP Header Rewrites part(s) of the header in the HTTP request before
passing it to the web server.

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GUI item

Description

Host

Enable then type a host name, such as

store.example.com, or IP address if you want to replace
the value of the Host: field in the header of HTTP requests.
Requests will be redirected to this web host.
This field supports back references such as $0 to the parts of
the original request that matched any capture groups that you
entered in Regular Expression for each object in the condition
table. (A capture group is a regular expression, or part of one,
surrounded in parentheses.)
Use $n (0 <= n <= 9) to invoke a substring, where n is the
order of appearance of the regular expression, from left to
right, from outside to inside, then from top to bottom.
For example, regular expressions in the condition table in this
order:
(a)(b)(c(d))(e)(f)
would result in variables with the following values:

$0: a

$1: b

$2: cd

$3: d

$4: e

$5: f

For an example, see Example: Rewriting URLs using

variables on page 23.
Using Physical
Server

Enable to insert the variable FORTIWEB_PSERVER in Host.

At the time of each specific HTTP request, FortiScan will
replace this variable with the IP address of the physical server
to which it is forwarding the request.
Tip: Use this option when the Deployment Mode option in the
server policies using this rule is either Server Balance or HTTP
Content Routing. In such cases, by definition of load balancing,
HTTP requests will be distributed among multiple web servers,
and the specific IP addresses of the physical servers cannot be
known in advance.

URL

Enable then type a string, such as /catalog/item1, if you

want to replace the URL in the HTTP request.
Do not include the name of the web host, such as
www.example.com, nor the protocol.
Like Host, this field supports back references such as $0 to the
parts of the original request that matched any capture groups
that you entered in Regular Expression for each object in the
condition table.
For an example, see Example: Rewriting URLs using regular
expressions on page 22.

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GUI item

Description

Referer

Enable then type a URI, such as

http://www.example.com/index, if you want to rewrite
the Referer: field in the HTTP header.
This option is available only if Request Action is Rewrite HTTP
Header.

Using Physical
Server

Enable to insert the variable FORTIWEB_PSERVER in Referer.

At the time of each specific HTTP request, FortiScan will
replace this variable with the IP address of the physical server
to which it is forwarding the request.
Tip: Use this option when the Deployment Mode option in the
server policies using this rule is either Server Balance or HTTP
Content Routing. In such cases, by definition of load balancing,
HTTP requests will be distributed among multiple web servers,
and the specific IP addresses of the physical servers cannot be
known in advance.

Redirect In Location, type a URI, such as http://www.example.com/newurl, to use in the 302 Moved Temporarily redirection HTTP response from the
FortiWeb appliance. Like Host and URL, this field supports back references.

Send 403 Forbidden Return a 403 Forbidden response to the client.

6 If you selected Response Action in Action Type, in the Response Action drop-down list,
select one of the following:

Rewrite HTTP Body In Replacement, type the string that will replace content in
the body of HTTP responses.

Rewrite HTTP Location In Location, type a URI, such as

http://www.example.com/new-url, to use in the 302 Moved Temporarily
redirection when the HTTP response matches. Like Host and URL, this field
supports back references.

7 Click Create New to add match conditions for the rule to URL Rewriting Condition
Table.
A dialog appears.

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8 Configure these settings:

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GUI item

Description

Object

Select which part of the HTTP request will be tested for a match:

HTTP Host The Host: field in the HTTP header.

This option does not appear if Response Action in step 6 was
Rewrite HTTP Body.

HTTP Request URL The URL in the HTTP header.

This option does not appear if Response Action in step 6 was
Rewrite HTTP Body.

HTTP Referer The Referer: field in the HTTP header. This

option appears only if Action Type in step 4 was Request Action.
This option does not appear if Response Action in step 6 was
Rewrite HTTP Body.

HTTP Body The content of the request, such as an HTML

document.
This option appears only if Response Action in step 6 was
Rewrite HTTP Body.

HTTP Location The Location: field in the header of the

request.
This option appears only if Response Action in step 6 was
Rewrite HTTP Location.

If the request must meet multiple conditions (for example, it must

contain both a matching Host: field and a matching URL), add each
condition to the condition table separately.
Regular
Depending on your selection in Object and Meet this condition if, type a
Expression regular expression that defines either all matching or all non-matching
objects. Also configure Meet this condition if.
For example, for the URL rewriting rule to match all URLs that begin
with /wordpress, you could enter ^/wordpress, then, in Meet this
condition if, select Object matches the regular expression.
The pattern is not required to begin with a slash ( / ).
When you have finished typing the regular expression, click the >>
(test) icon. This opens the Regular Expression Validator window where
you can fine-tune the expression.
Protocol
Filter

Enable if you want to match this condition only for either HTTP or
HTTPS. Also configure Protocol.
For example, you could redirect clients that accidentally request the
login page by HTTP to a more secure HTTPS channel but the
redirect is not necessary for HTTPS requests.
As another example, if URLs in HTTPS requests should be exempt
from rewriting, you could configure the rewriting rule to apply only to
HTTP requests.

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GUI item

Description

Protocol

Select which protocol will match this condition, either HTTP or HTTPS.

This option appears only if Protocol Filter is enabled.

Meet this
Indicate how to use Regular Expression when determining whether or
condition if not this URL rewriting condition is met.

Object does not match the regular expression If the

regular expression does not match the request object, the
condition is met.

Object matches the regular expression If the regular

expression does match the request object, the condition is met.

If all conditions are met, the FortiScan appliance executes the Request
Action or Response Action, whichever you selected.
9 If you selected HTTP Referer from Object, also configure the following:
GUI item

Description

If no
Referer
field in
HTTP
header

Select either:

Do not meet this condition

Meet this condition

Requests can lack a Referer: field for several reasons, such as if the
user manually types the URL, and the request does not result from a
hyperlink from another web site, or if the URL resulted from an HTTPS
connection. (See the RFC 2616 section on the Referer: field.) In
those cases, the field cannot be tested for a matching value.
This option appears only if Object is HTTP Referer.

10 Click OK.
11 Repeat the previous two steps until you have defined all matching HTTP requests or
responses that should be rewritten as defined in this rule.
12 Group the URL rewrite rule in a URL rewriting policy (see Grouping URL rewriting
rules on page 23).

Example: HTTP-to-HTTPS redirect

Example.com is a business-oriented social media provider. Its clients require that
attackers cannot fraudulently post comments. If an attacker can post while disguised as
originating from the clients business, as this could enable an attacker to ruin a businesss
reputation.
To provide clients with protection from HTTP session hijacking tools such as Firesheep,
Example.com wants to automatically redirect all HTTP requests to HTTPS. This way,
before the client attempts to log in and exposes both their credentials and HTTP
session ID to an eavesdropper, the response and subsequent requests are SSL/TLS
encrypted, and thereby protected.

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To do this, example.com will apply a rewriting rule that matches all HTTP requests,
regardless of host name variations or URL, such as:
http://www.example.com/login
http://www.example.co.jp/
and redirects them to the requivalent URL on its secure sites:
https://www.example.com/login
https://www.example.co.jp/
This rewriting rule has 3 parts:

Regular expression that matches HTTP requests with any host name (.*)
Note: This regular expression should not match HTTPS requests, since it would
decrease performance to rewrite requests that are already in HTTPS.

Regular expression that matches requests with any URL path /(.*)

Redirect destination location that assembles the host name ($0) and URL ($1) from
the request in front of the new protocol prefix, https://

This could be configured via either the CLI or web UI.

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config waf url-rewrite url-rewrite-rule

edit "http_to_https"
set action redirect
set location "https://$0/$1/$2"
set host-status disable
set host-use-pserver disable
set referer-status disable
set referer-use-pserver disable
set url-status disable
config match-condition
edit 1
set reg-exp "(.*)"
set protocol-filter enable
next
edit 2
set object http-url
set reg-exp "/(.*)"
next
end
next
end

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config waf url-rewrite url-rewrite-policy

edit "http_to_https"
config rule
edit 1
set url-rewrite-rule-name "http_to_https"
next
end
next
end

Example: Rewriting URLs using regular expressions

Example.edu is a large university. Professors use a mixture of WordPress and Movable
Type software for their course web pages to keep students updated. In addition, the
campus bookstore and software store use custom shopping cart software. The URLs of
these web applications contain clues about the underlying vendors, databases and
scripting languages.
The university is a frequent target of attacks because it is a large organization with many
mobile users and guests, and an Internet connection with large bandwidth. Its network
administrators want to hide the underlying technology to make it more difficult for attackers
to craft platform-specific attacks. Example.edu also wants to make clients bookmarked
URLs more permanent, so that clients will not need to repair them if the university
switches software vendors.
Because it has so many URLs, the university uses regular expressions to rewrite sets of
similar URLs, rather than configuring rewrites for each URL individually. More specific
URL rewrite rules are selected first in the URL rewriting group, before general ones, due to
the affects of the matching order on which each rewrite rule is applied.
Table 1:

Example URL rewrites using regular expressions

Example URL in
clients request

Result

^/cgi/python/ustore/payment /store/checkout
.html$

/cgi/python/ustore/pa
yment.html

/store/checkout

^/ustore*$

/store/view

/ustore/viewItem.asp? /store/view
id=1&img=2

/Wordpress/(.*)

/blog/$0

/wordpress/10/11/24

/blog/10/11/24

/(.*)\.xml

/$0

/index.xml

/index

Regular Expression in URL

match condition

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URL

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Example: Rewriting URLs using variables

Example.com has a web site that uses ASP, but the administrator wants it to appear that
the web site uses PHP. To do this, the administrator configured a rule that changes any
requested file's extension which is asp into php.
The condition table contains two match conditions, in this order:
1 The Host: may be anything.
2 The request URL must end in .asp.
If both of those are true, the request is rewritten.
The administrator does not want to rewrite matching requests into a single URL. Instead,
the administrator wants each rewritten URL to re-use parts of the original request.
To assemble the rewritten URL by re-using the original requests file path and Host:, the
administrator uses two backreference variables: $0 and $1. Each variable refers to a part
of the original request. The parts are determined by which capture group was matched in
the Regular Expression field of each condition table object.

$0: The text that matched the first capture group (.*). In this case, because the
object is the Host: field, the matching text is the host name, www.example.com.

$1: The text that matched the second capture group, which is also (.*). In this
case, because the object is the request URL, the matching text is the file path,
news/local.

Table 2:

Example URL rewrites using regular expressions

Example request

URL Rewriting
Condition Table

Replacement URL Result

www.example.com

HTTP Host

(.*)

Host

$0

www.example.com

/news/local.asp

HTTP URL

/(.*)\.asp

URL

/$1.php

/news/local.php

Grouping URL rewriting rules

Application Delivery > URL Rewriting Policy > URL Rewriting Policy enables you to create
URL rewriting policies from existing URL rewriting rules.
To configure a URL rewriting policy
1 Before you can URL rewriting policy, you must first configure one or more URL
rewriting rules. See Rewriting & redirecting on page 16.
2 Go to Application Delivery > URL Rewriting Policy > URL Rewriting Policy.

To access this part of the web UI, your administrators account access profile must
have Read and Write permission to items in the Web Protection Configuration
category. For details, see Permissions on page 38.

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3 Click Create New.

A dialog appears.

Clear all
Edit
Delete
4 In Name, type a name that can be referenced by other parts of the configuration. Do
not use spaces or special characters. The maximum length is 35 characters.
5 Click OK.
6 Click Create New.
A dialog appears.

7 For Priority, enter the priority for this rule in relation to other defined rules.
Rule order affects URL rewriting rule matching and behavior. The search begins with
the highest Priority number (0 = greatest priority) rule in the list and progresses in order
towards the largest number (lowest priority) in the list. Matching rules are determined
by comparing the rule and the connections content. If no rule matches, the connection
remains unchanged.
When the FortiScan appliance finds a matching rule, it applies the matching rule's
specified actions to the connection.
8 From the Rewriting Rule Name drop-down list, select the name of an existing URL
rewriting rule to add to the policy. See Rewriting & redirecting on page 16 for more
information.
To view or change the information associated with the rule, select the Detail link. The
URL Rewriting Rule dialog appears, where you can view and edit the rules. Use the
browser Back button to return.
9 Click OK.
10 Repeat the previous steps for each rule you want to add to the URL rewriting policy.
11 To apply the URL rewriting policy, select it in an inline protection profile. For details, see
Configuring a protection profile for inline topologies on page 433.

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